Bridging Unix and Windows At NASA

slashdotess writes "Information Week reports: "About a year ago, Patrick McCartney, a Johnson Center project manager, created a Linux desktop environment that could also run government-mandated Microsoft apps. This let his team of 30 engineers continue to program in a Unixlike environment and create Word documents and Outlook E-mail all on the same PC. This mixed-use scenario is slowly taking hold, encouraged by a growing number of applications for running Linux on PC desktops." Score another one for Linux on the Desktop."

Crossover plugins

[tavarua]

This article can be summed up in one sentence: The Johnson Center's IT team installed CrossOver Office from CodeWeavers Inc. on McCartney's PCs to give the engineers access to a variety of open-source and Microsoft Office apps.

Bottom line: They didn't do anything special.

Couldn't you already do this

[Jason O'Neil]

Sorry, but I was under the impression that CodeWeavers could already run Word and Outlook.

Is this just an example of it's implementation or have they added something new?

Re:Hybrids

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing personal, but if you look in the extras for AOTC, you'll see plenty of interviews with ILM employees who worked on AOTC, sometimes they're demonstrating bits and pieces of AOTC.

Pay close attention to the hardware in the background. Quite often it isn't a Windows system or a Linux system. It's a Mac.

ILM does a lot of work on Macs, no matter what the geeks and/or press monkeys may say (it's fab to talk up Linux, unfashionable to mention Macs).

Re:They kept the worst demons...

[ender81b]

Ouch. I've found this especially useful for office installs (link below) - basically it is a custom script that will not only install on first run but if some random asinine problem happens will look for a network share of office and grab the files necassary. even works if the people delete their entire office install:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/defaul t. asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/office/office2000/dep loy/depopt/wiofc2k.asp

Re:Government ?wasting? taxpayer money

[Dysan2k]

Schools and business are 2 totally different institutions. Not trying to down you, Woogie, but computers used in a school system and a business are not the same. Give ya a good example:

Computers go down at the Board of Education. People can't access budget, students grades, or profile records. Wait until the system comes back up or is restored from backup. It's just annoying since there are no REALLY necessary deadlines outside of payroll.

Computers go down at the office. Sales can't work on/give presentations to clients, customer information can't be retrieved (think ISP or Credit card processor), or quarterly reports can't be completed for stockholders/banks. This can cost a company a TON of money, clients could leave to find another place of business, etc. (Imagine needing the IRS to look up your information to make sure your extension was filed lest you be fined/go to jail.)

Keep in mind, swapping an office or group of offices takes a TON of time. Normally there are a number of in-house applications that would have to be re-written AND heavily tested before they could be implemented (think of the MEGS of VB source that would have to be ported to perl/php/java). In the gov't, MOST applications are custom-written, many by contracted companies, so the gov't doesn't necessarily have the source to it. Then there is retraining of employees to use the new office/email applications, and the meer re-install of EVERYone's machines from Win to Linux where you hope that all the needed hardware is supported (which has gotten SO much better in the past 3 years.)

It's a daunting task, and can be VERY costly in man-hours to do such a task. If nothing else, the down-time upon switching over and the performance curve while everyone learns the new applications.

I agree in the sense that I'd LOVE to see M$ no longer in the gov't offices, but I also realize what it would entail to switch everything over.

Evolution is NOT the answer

[anewsome]

I wanted to correct everyone on the list who is incorrectly stating that Ximian's Evolution is the answer to Outlook or Outlook express.

A little background here first, I use Linux on my desktop, laptop, servers, to run my business, for video editing, etc. I've been pretty much a Linux only user since about 1995. I installed one of the first slackware versions sometime in 1993 or so. Suffice to say I know Linux very well.

Anyone who says Ximian Evolution is an answer for Outlook is sorely mistaken. These are people who obviously saw some screenshots and said wow, native Linux app and it looks just as good as Outlook. Or these are people who fired it up once or twice, sent a couple of emails and never really used the app on a continous basis.

Well I can tell you I use Evolution every single day, and I have since pre 1.0. I would be embarrased for myself or anyone who tried to pass off Evolution as being more stable (or feature packed) than MS Outlook. Evolution crashes constantly, and I usually find myself killing and restarting it at least 5 times a day, every day (combining the at home and at work restarts).

For email, Mozilla is still light years ahead in stability and speed, as well as having more features that I need and use daily.

I am currently using the Evolution 1.2.1, fresh from Ximian.com and although it is better than 1.2, it still is riddled with bugs and everyday crashes. The biggest fix in 1.2.1 is that LDAP finally works, but it still has a bug.

Topping the list of bugs for me is:

• Pressing Send/Receive button at any time for any reason will certainly hang the application. It will not receive any mail on it's own after that.
• LDAP support can not seem to remember that my LDAP server is anonmyous. It only remembers passwords, not non-passwords or the lack of a password. Prompts me everytime for an LDAP password and there is none!
• Can not search recursively in IMAP folders. Mozilla has done this since a really long time ago. In my year 2000 folder I have another 12 folders, one for each month. In Evolution I have to search each one since there is no recursive search. Mozilla does this by default.
• Good luck getting a working calendar server for Evolution other than MS Exchange server.
• Slow, slow, slow for what I use it for most, Email.
• Pre 1.2.1 versions did not even have working LDAP. I did a tcpdump and found the app was not even doing a bind to the LDAP server, it was simply trying to do the search without a bound handle to the server. I reported the bug and it was fixed in 1.2.1. Makes me wonder how it ever worked for any developer in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I will continue to use Evolution, crossing my fingers that it will get better (it will), but for people who compare such a young, crash-ridden application to high quality commercial offerings just shows overzealous ignorance.

--Aaron